Building permitting plays a significant role in life cycles of buildings because without a building permit a legal construction fails. However, digitalization in building permit, authorities is rare ...in a global context and issuing a building permit is primarily a manual and time-consuming process. In current research approaches on digital building permits, the focus lays on the digitalization of building-related regulation checks. Even if the approaches cover an important step in the building permit process, other significant steps such as administrative processes are neglected. In preliminary research, a building permit process model for structuring action-oriented elements was developed and transferred and applied to a Building Information Modelling (BIM)-oriented and process-based web application prototype, which serves as a basis. An empirical study - using qualitative expert interviews in a building permit authority in South Tyrol (Italy) - was conducted to simulate a BIM-oriented building permit review as well as to investigate the building permit processes thoroughly. The results show a classification of the information needed for digital tools supporting the building permit process, building permit processes of the case study authority, and the digital tools used. In the discussion, knowledge gained from a comparison between other building permit processes is presented alongside considerations for follow-up research.
•The efforts w.r.t. building permit processes, land administration, and 3D city modeling in Turkey are elaborately examined.•A framework including building permit procedures, 3D registration of ...condominium, and update of 3D city models is proposed.•The use of digital building models is suggested within the context of the proposed framework.•The digitalization and interoperability underpin the reformative framework.
A smart built environment has become necessary for ensuring social well-being due to uncontrolled population growth and unrestrainable urban sprawl. In this connection, effective land administration is a significant element to actualize sustainable development. Yet existing building permit procedures fail to satisfy the need for current construction demands because of the insufficient transparency and inefficient procedures. Two dimensional (2D) based systems also remain incapable to unambiguously delineate the property ownership related to complex buildings. Keeping up-to-date the three dimensional (3D) urban models is another key for smart cities but this issue has become difficult owing to the rapid changes in the cities. In this sense, this paper first examines thoroughly the current situation in Turkey in terms of the building permit procedures, land administration, and 3D city modeling. Then, the paper detailedly proposes a reformative framework. The framework consists of the use of digital building models for both building permit processes and 3D registration of property ownership, as well as updating the 3D city model databases. The proposed framework is evaluated in terms of its applicability with a discussion of the prospective directions.
Growing interest is awarded to the digitalization of the building permitting use case and many works are developed about the topic. However, the subject is very complex and many aspects are usually ...tackled separately, making it very hard for traditional literature reviews to grasp the actual progress in the overall topic. This paper unveils the detailed state of the art in Digital Building Permitting (DBP) by critically analysing the literature by means of a set of coding tags (research progress, implementation, affected DBP workflow steps, ambitions addressed) assigned by a multidisciplinary team. The executed research shows that the mainly addressed aspects of the digitalization of building permit process are the technologies to check the compliance of design proposals against regulations, followed by the digitalization of regulations. Improvable aspects identified in the entire building permit system are instead e.g. the involvement of officers, scalability of solutions and interoperability of data, intended both as data validation and as integration of geospatial data with building models.
•There is an ever-increasing interest in digital building permit worldwide.•The literature mainly focuses on BIM-based automated code compliance checking.•Application content review (incl. regulation check and reports) is the focal point.•Machine-readable building codes and interoperability are the key requirements.•Gaps are in mindset change of officers and data interoperability and integration.
Without a building permit, a construction project cannot be legally implemented. For this, the building project must undergo a review process by the competent authority. As the number of building ...projects to be inspected increases, building authorities are faced with ever greater challenges, due to the lack of adequate personnel to manage the inefficient, labor extensive, and lengthy building permit process. In-depth scientific studies of the existing building permit processes are missing so far. This paper introduces a proposed framework that aims to investigate and compare the building permit processes in Germany and in the United States of America (USA). Among other things, the processes are studied for both by-right and non-by-right cases. In doing so, the data are based on a collected empirical study in the form of qualitative expert interviews. The findings of the comparison provide a detailed description and illustration of the current building permit processes, as well as the lessons learned from both countries.
The building permit process is a crucial aspect of the construction industry, as it ensures the safety and compliance of buildings with local regulations. A significant improvement in terms of ...accuracy, transparency and efficiency would be brought from digitalization, therefore several projects are being developed on the topic. However, to reach high maturity levels, it is necessary to address the several parts of building permit systems in a structured way, by considering the several subsystems composing the main issue thoroughly (e.g., legislative, organizational, technological, procedural). Therefore, this article proposes a taxonomy of building permit systems that can be the reference to guide and assess related developments across diverse countries, allowing their interpretation in a common framework. Different methodologies for taxonomy developments were applied in this study, including a combination of committee approaches and empirical methods, with a final validation against a use case. The obtained high-level taxonomy of building permit systems can serve as a basis for future improvements in the building permit digitalization and could be the basis for an extended ontology.
In this paper we propose a novel, cloud-based framework to support citizens and city officials in the building permit process. The proposed framework is efficient, user-friendly, and transparent with ...a quick turn-around time for homeowners. Compared to existing permit systems, the proposed smart city permit framework provides a pre-permitting decision workflow, and incorporates a data analytics and mining module that enables the continuous improvement of both the end user experience and the permitting and urban planning processes. This is enabled through a data mining-powered permit recommendation engine as well as a data analytics process that allow a gleaning of key insights for real estate development and city planning purposes, by analyzing how users interact with the system depending on their location, time, and type of request. The novelty of the proposed framework lies in the integration of a pre-permit processing front-end with permit processing and data analytics & mining modules, along with utilization of techniques for extracting knowledge from the data generated through the use of the system. The proposed framework is completely cloud-based, such that any city can deploy it with lower initial as well as maintenance costs. We also present a proof-of-concept use case, using real permit data from New York City.
•A novel, cloud-based online permit system framework is proposed.•Data visualizations allow city officials to analyze the data and identify trends.•The interactive pre-permitting process is supported by a rule-based decision tree that guides users.•Collaborative filtering used to generate permit recommendations to end users.•A proof-of-concept using NYC open permit data set is presented.
Public organizations responsible for building permits are increasingly considering the potential applications of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in their workflows, but BIM adoption still ...remains a complex challenge. This research aims to investigate the factors affecting BIM adoption for building permits through a case study of a public organization currently developing and piloting a BIM-based building permit process. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interview data revealed ten factors that influence BIM adoption for building permits: complexity (in both development and use) of a BIM-based building permit system; relative advantages/disadvantages of BIM for building permits; the existing building permit system; management support for a BIM-based building permit process; organizational culture; BIM awareness; training and learning; available expertise for a BIM-based building permit process; external pressure; and legal context. The findings are important for public authorities’ understanding of both the enablers and challenges of the BIM-based building permit process, and have practical implications for professionals in public authorities in particular, and also the Architecture Engineering Construction/Facilities Management (AEC/FM) industry in general, to guide their steps towards adopting BIM. This research also highlights the potential benefits of BIM adoption for the building permit process.
Engineering design review, which is a time-consuming task in the building permit process, faces challenges such as a scarcity of design review specialists, vulnerability to manipulation and ...corruption, and a lack of traceability and transparency. This paper explores the integration of blockchain and online service trading in addressing these challenges. This paper proposes a platform-based design review service trading scheme, engaging a distributed network of experts to overcome resource limitations and integrates blockchain technology to improve process traceability. The system model is presented, an access control model and a design version management method are proposed. A prototype system is developed, and a real-world project is used to illustrate the online design review process. Security, function, and performance evaluations show that the scheme is secure and efficient. This study highlights blockchain's potential in digital building permits. Future work can explore advanced service matching algorithms in online design review service trading platforms.
•This study proposes a platform-based design review service trading scheme to engage a distributed network of design experts, aiming to overcome resource limitations.•The proposed scheme integrates blockchain technology to enhance immutability and traceability in the digital building permit process.•An access control model and design version management method are developed to achieve secure data transmission and trace design modifications in the design review process.•A real-world project is used as an example to simulated the proposed scheme.
The adoption of building information modelling (BIM) enables data-driven decision-making for many participants in the construction process. Building authorities are stakeholders that have not yet ...benefited from data integration using BIM. In many cases, parts of their processes have already improved through digitisation initiatives. Now they are on the threshold of a major digital transformation enabled by the integration of BIM into their processes. This study examines a building permit process based entirely on BIM, developed at the Vienna Building Authority in Austria. In a series of workshops with all important stakeholders, the current building permit process was captured in detail and transferred to a data-driven, BIM-based process. The study shows that the complete capture and digitisation of the building approval process not only enables the automation of traditional processes such as code compliance checks and neighbourhood hearings but also supports the introduction of innovative sub-processes such as a pre-check of BIM models and augmented reality-based hearings with neighbours (in a pilot phase). The results suggest that the developed process not only significantly increases the efficiency and transparency of building permit procedures, but also represents a decisive step towards integrating the authority into the BIM process of a building.
The building permitting process is characterized by enormous complexity and multidisciplinarity. It consists of multiple steps, and many involved stakeholders with various responsibilities and ...personal goals. This, together with the fact that in common practice issuance of a building permit is mostly manual, makes the process long, inefficient and subjective. Digitalization of the building permitting process has been a subject of interest for many researchers. In this work, by implementing a systematic literature review, we map the existing knowledge gaps in the domain that hinder further development and facilitation of technological solutions within the building permitting process. This work demonstrates that the lack of fundamental research and the lack of detailed investigation of each individual sub-process within the entire permitting process, hinder further development of digital or automated solutions for building permitting. Furthermore, we provide a detailed mapping of the sub-processes that building permitting comprises of, as identified in the existing research. As much of the existing research efforts are focused on digitalization and automation aspects, we also provide a clear definition of the different levels of digitalization and automation of the permitting process.
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